Boys Toys: My New Ride

Woohoo... here's my new ride. Got this bike for a dime off one of the triathlete I was looking after.

I once had a conversation with this girl on bikes. She was never a 'rider' and would not understand why her boyfriend would need so many bikes. After getting on a racer herself, she was able to answer her own question. One is for city riding, if it gets stolen you dun really give a damn. The other is for riding off-road when the suspension makes the ride more comfortable. And the last one is for when you wanna go really really fast. I must say that she's a true roady 'convert' now as she's taking part in her first OD triathlon next month and Half Iron later on in the year.



After riding for months on the mountain bike and forever lagging behind. I'm finding myself closing the gap to the front of the pack now. Its a breeze to ride. With long stretches of open road and hardly any traffic or traffice lights, its the perfect backdrop for a roadbike.

Politics and Health

Half of my pay comes from the government, while the other half comes from donations and sales of diabetes related products. We have very little to do anything else other than the day to day running of the clinic. Therefore when election is round the corner and the government is throwing out ridiculous amounts of money, you just got to put your heads together to get a submission in there. Its these little bits of money that helps to upgrade and improve our services.
The process is long and arduous. After the submission, it took 3-4 months before we got to know the outcome. So when a friend who is working in the government sector rings to say congrats you've got the money...so what did you put in for? Urr... cant really remember, but I know its something to do with cooking and exercise, let me check to see what I wrote!


$143K for 4 series of 10 workshops around exercise, nutrition and cooking for diabetic and cardiac clients. There's always small grants around, I've written a few for 1-2k but this is the biggest lot of money I've ever recieved.
Needless to say, I'll be doing the cooking and nutrition session. But hey, they'll be no golden taps here... we are truly poor.

Great Outdoors: Katherine

With the booming economy, the Adelaide to Darwin rail and Tiger Airways spreading it wings around Asia, so too have the tourism numbers increase. Whenever the Dry season approaches the Southerners escape the winter chills to come up to Darwin for its crisp cool weather. But with this Dry Season, I noticed that there was also a large number of Taiwanese backpackers. Here's a group which I got to know. Without the new working/tourist visa and Tiget Airways they would not have contemplated backpacking. A sad fact of a Asian working system is that you can never expect to ask for 6 months leave and still expect your job to be there when you get back. Many of these girls gave up their jobs in order to travel. Good thing for me is that I get a free holiday as well. My contribution: the car (obviously with me in it). This time, we drove to Katherine (3 hours from Darwin) to kayak up the gorge.

Here's Edith Falls our first night campsite. After a short hike you get to a nice big waterfall swimhole..Second day, we drove to Katherine to begin our kayak up the gorges. Katherine has 12-13 gorges (I think). The hardest part was not the kayak rather the carry of the kayaks over the gorges which separates the river... Thats me being sun-smart.

Am sure Sis would love the adventure and so would no 1 and 2. Not sure how I'd get no. 3 over though.

And thats how I busted my watch.

End of an Era

I still remember vividly where I got this watch (an old Formula 1 series Tag Heuer). It was at the HourGlass shop at Marina Square. I had been eyeing this watch for a while and decided to get it after much deliberation (well it was the cheapest one of the Tag range I could afford). Think I paid $200 plus for it then. But in those days, when you're at Poly and not earning a wage, it was a lot to spend. No complains here but after a good 12-13 years of service its finally had it.
Tags are suppose to be waterproof but as I was kayaking up Katherine Gorge I noticed water had gotten in. Too late to do anything, not before long, it was gone. Guess after so many years, the seals would have been stuffed. Am a bit reluctant to throw it away though.

Lesson on Survival

Waking up at 7am to get into a 4WD with 3 Aboriginal health workers for a 3 day Aboriginal Mens Camp doesnt really sound like my normal work week does it.. An hour later, we were bashing through the Aussie outback where I could hardly see any road trails. These guys sure know where they are going. Anyway, without going into too much detail, Aboriginal people have a dramatically lower health status as compared to the rest of Australia. During white colonisation, many were centralised into camps and gradually lost their skills of being a hunter gatherer. The camp was organised for us health professionals to discuss issues of smoking, alcohol abuse, sexual health and of course, nutrition. But it was also for the Aborginal Elder to teach the younger ones the ways of hunting (and being physically fit).


Heres the billabong where our main source of water is. Me, after going through the National Service, you'd think would be more survival savvy. But I got told off when I was asked to get water. Well, I take pail, go river, grab water; how hard could that be.
Apprantly, I had to tie a rope to the pail and stand behind the tree to do it. Why????
Cos the locals have seen a 4m croc lurking in these water!!!!


Task 2: Shooting a flying target, namely duck of geese with a double barrelled shot gun.

A: "So Gerard, have you ever shot a gun?" (I think they were expecting never as the answer)
Me: "Yes, I did"
A: "Woa, you should be pretty good at this then. What gun have you shot before?"
Me: "Urrr...just the M16" (Hey trust me, I was being humble here, at least I didnt give the full list of M203, section assualt rifle, GPMG, bazooka)
A: "What the?!? we got a terrorist here! Are you serious?"

Heres a pict of the boys waiting for geese to fly overhead.
The Boys with the kill.And heres lunch within 1hr. Freshly shot from the sky, plucked and cooked over wood fire.

Well, as for me, I did not get one. And needless to say, heres the joke of the camp. "Hey Jerry, you didnt get any! You just missing your M16 right"

Next Task: Fishing.

All these kids have is just a reel and a rubber fish bait. When they lost the bait, they just tied a small piece of plastic bag to it and were still reeling them in!

Heres another task which I failed terribly. Theres only these words to descibe it.

Outclassed, Outcast and Outlast. For something so simple, you would not think that there would be any technique involved. But hey, you gotta pull the line in at such a speed whereby it reassembles a fish swimming?!?

Outcast: By the time I had cast and pulled the bait in 2 times, I reckon the Aboriginal kid beside me had already cast his forth or fifth time.

Outlast: Its Australia. The sun is FREAKING HOT. Even with suntan lotion, I'm not standing under the hot sun just to hook a barra!

Think in the end, they taught me more about survival than I did with them on nutrition.

Great Outdoors: Part 2

Me and the boys (Hao, Rocky and Ravi).

The view at the Ubirr plains

Sunset at Ubirr over the Nardab flood plains.

The Great Outdoors

One of the joys of being in Australia; the Great Outdoors. The ability to just pack up and go camping for the weekend. There's nothing like sleeping under a blanket of stars, waking up to the scent of fresh morning air and having bread toasted over a wood fire . Here's one of the trips where I went Kakadu National Park.

Darwin only has 2 seasons. The Wet and the Dry. The wet starts from around Novemeber to March whereby the temperature starts to rise to the low-mid 30's and humidity is at an all time high. As the name suggests, the season comes with wet tropical downpours with freakish thunderstorms (not a good time to visit unless you are one of those camera fanatics who love to capture lighting strikes). I must say, even though coming from Singapore, where lightning is a common occurance that the 'lightning' show is pretty amazing. Maybe its because of the lack of high rise that you see the full extent of its beauty here.
The Dry on the other hand (April to Oct) is characterised by cool 'winter' night in the teens and daytime temp of 20's with low humidity. Perfect weather for camping.

Our campsite for the first night.


Rocky, Joyce and me.

The group .
Yellow water billabong.

And here's why you dun go swimming in a billabong (notice the croc? I was told its a good 3m and not to stick your head out of the boat cos they can JUMP)